Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Legion of Lazarus
    The Legion of Lazarus
    The Legion of Lazarus
    Ebook98 pages1 hour

    The Legion of Lazarus

    By Edmond Hamilton

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Being expelled from an air lock into deep space was the legal method of execution. But it was also the only way a man could qualify for The Legion Of Lazarus.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStart Publishing LLC
    Release dateOct 19, 2016
    ISBN9781682995457
    The Legion of Lazarus
    Author

    Edmond Hamilton

    Edmond Hamilton (1904-1977) was an experienced pulp science fiction writer as well as a comic book writer who scripted many issues of Superman.

    Read more from Edmond Hamilton

    Related to The Legion of Lazarus

    Related ebooks

    Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Six Million Reasons

      Jul 9, 2021

      Six Million Reasons
      6 min read

    • Article

      Bound

      Apr 10, 2022

      I came fully awake as I sat up and cracked my head on the thwart of my upturned canoe. The pain cleared my head. I felt under my bedroll for my knife, hoping I hadn’t made enough noise to attract the attention of whatever—whoever?—had waked me. I did

      17 min read

    • Article

      The Room Above

      Sep 10, 2021

      For a moment, he had no thoughts. Just…observations… A blue hole. No – a window… Crystalline sky swelling through a big square gap in the otherwise plain white wall. He blinked. Was that sky out there? What was in here? Where was ‘here’? He blinked s

      29 min read

    • Article

      Last Light

      Oct 13, 2017

      Last Light
      9 min read

    • Article

      Sigrid Nunez

      Sep 15, 2017

      During the 1980s, in California, a large number of Cambodian women went to their doctors with the same complaint: they could not see. The women were all war refugees. Before fleeing their homeland, they had witnessed the atrocities for which the Khme

      23 min read

    • Article

      The Final Truth

      Jan 21, 2020

      The Final Truth
      5 min read

    • Article

      Excerpt: 'The Last Thing You Surrender'

      Feb 10, 2019

      In this abridged excerpt from "The Last Thing You Surrender" by columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr., elements of the all-black 761st Tank Battalion make a grisly discovery and Pvt. Luther Hayes, whose parents were murdered before his eyes by a white mob whe

      3 min read

    • Article

      Quotients

      May 7, 2020

      Quotients
      8 min read

    • Article

      Pleasure Palace

      Sep 1, 2022

      Pleasure Palace
      15 min read

    • Article

      Cast Out

      Jul 10, 2021

      Verity pushed back the quilts, rolled off her straw mattress onto the floor, felt for the poker, and stirred the ashes. The embers glowed. She wouldn’t have to go fire-borrowing again. Her chilled hands were clumsy. One glowing bit of wood rolled fro

      21 min read

    • Article

      The Orphan’s Dilemma

      Aug 10, 2021

      In a few minutes they’re going to say, “It’s your turn, Harold.” He will face Ms. Wickham with her thick black frames and smiling, slightly bugeyed look, the question more in her eyes than on her lips because he already knows what that question is. H

      11 min read

    • Article

      A Knock At The Door

      Mar 1, 2020

      A Knock At The Door
      11 min read

    • Article

      Playing God

      Apr 10, 2023

      After Jack was abducted by the alien spaceship, and after the round vessel had vanished into the Milky Way, he found himself walking down a tubular corridor with white vibrating walls, escorted by a sinuous blonde who smiled graciously and said her n

      13 min read

    • Article

      Performance

      Nov 10, 2022

      “Wait here,” the guard said as he shut the door behind him, leaving me by myself. The floor inside the lab was polished, and the air smelled of disinfectant, and yet the room felt unclean. Leaves shook on a tree outside the window, making shadows on

      18 min read

    • Article

      GhoST StoRies

      Apr 12, 2021

      GhoST StoRies
      8 min read

    • Article

      Chost Stories

      Apr 12, 2021

      Chost Stories
      8 min read

    • Article

      Excerpts From The Works Of The 2024 Whiting Award Winners

      Apr 10, 2024

      The 2024 Whiting Award winners were announced Wednesday night. Below are excerpts from their work.

      19 min read

    • Article

      Prey

      May 10, 2021

      As I drove slowly towards the mob of angry protestors and my meeting with 200, I thought of 199. The ashes of a once hard man, staring at me with wide eyes that pleaded for hope like a dog begging for treats. I’d somehow found a way to give him that

      41 min read

    • Article

      Prey

      Mar 10, 2024

      As I drove slowly toward the mob of angry protestors and my meeting with 200, I thought of 199. The ashes of a once hard man, staring at me with wide eyes that pleaded for hope like a dog begging for treats. I’d somehow found a way to give him that h

      41 min read

    • Article

      Storyteller

      Nov 4, 2021

      Storyteller
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Only Punishment

      Feb 10, 2022

      The floor of the room was white, but three of the walls and the ceiling were light blue. His own bland pajamas were light green. It was probably supposed to be calming, but it only angered Rats. He knew what this was—a fregging brainwashing facility,

      16 min read

    • Article

      79 The Terrible Grinning Men

      Sep 10, 2020

      79 The Terrible Grinning Men
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Homecoming

      Jul 13, 2022

      The Homecoming
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Homecoming

      Jul 13, 2022

      The Homecoming
      9 min read

    • Article

      Add Insult To Injury

      Nov 1, 2023

      ‘He can brighten a room just by leaving it’ Various attributions, including politician Lord Lilley on Gordon Brown ‘What exactly is on your mind—if you’ll excuse the exaggeration?’ American television presenter David Letterman ‘A face unclouded b

      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Legion of Lazarus

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Legion of Lazarus - Edmond Hamilton

      The Legion of Lazarus

      by Edmond Hamilton

      Start Publishing LLC

      Copyright © 2015 by Start Publishing LLC

      All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

      First Start Publishing eBook edition July 2015

      Start Publishing is a registered trademark of Start Publishing LLC

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      ISBN 13: 978-1-68299-545-7 

      Table of Contents

      Chapter I

      Chapter II

      Chapter III

      Chapter IV

      Chapter V

      Chapter VI

      Chapter VII

      Chapter VIII

      Chapter IX

      Chapter X

      The Legion of Lazarus

      by Edmond Hamilton

      Being expelled from an air lock into deep space was the legal method of execution. But it was also the only way a man could qualify for The Legion Of Lazarus.

      It isn’t the dying itself. It’s what comes before. The waiting, alone in a room without windows, trying to think. The opening of the door, the voices of the men who are going with you but not all the way, the walk down the corridor to the airlock room, the faces of the men, closed and impersonal. They do not enjoy this. Neither do they shrink from it. It’s their job.

      This is the room. It is small and it has a window. Outside there is no friendly sky, no clouds. There is space, and there is the huge red circle of Mars filling the sky, looking down like an enormous eye upon this tiny moon. But you do not look up. You look out.

      There are men out there. They are quite naked. They sleep upon the barren plain, drowsing in a timeless ocean. Their bodies are white as ivory and their hair is loose across their faces. Some of them seem to smile. They lie, and sleep, and the great red eye looks at them forever as they are borne around it.

      "It isn’t so bad, says one of the men who are with you inside this ultimate room. Fifty years from now, the rest of us will all be old, or dead."

      It is small comfort.

      The one garment you have worn is taken from you and the lock door opens, and the fear that cannot possibly become greater does become greater, and then suddenly that terrible crescendo is past. There is no longer any hope, and you learn that without hope there is little to be afraid of. You want now only to get it over with.

      You step forward into the lock.

      The door behind you shuts. You sense that the one before you is opening, but there is not much time. The burst of air carries you forward. Perhaps you scream, but you are now beyond sound, beyond sight, beyond everything. You do not even feel that it is cold.

      Chapter I

      There is a time for sleep, and a time for waking. But Hyrst had slept heavily, and the waking was hard. He had slept long, and the waking was slow.Fifty years, said the dim voice of remembrance. But another part of his mind said, No, it is only tomorrow morning.

      Another part of his mind. That was strange. There seemed to be more parts to his mind than he remembered having had before, but they were all confused and hidden behind a veil of mist. Perhaps they were not really there at all. Perhaps—

      Fifty years. I have been dead, he thought, and now I live again. Half a century. Strange.

      Hyrst lay on a narrow bed, in a place of subdued light and antiseptic-smelling air. There was no one else in the room. There was no sound.

      Fifty years, he thought. What is it like now, the house where I lived once, the country, the planet? Where are my children, where are my friends, my enemies, the people I loved, the people I hated?

      Where is Elena? Where is my wife?

      A whisper out of nowhere, sad, remote. Your wife is dead and your children are old. Forget them. Forget the friends and the enemies.

      But I can’t forget! cried Hyrst silently in the spaces of his own mind. It was only yesterday—

      Fifty years, said the whisper. And you must forget.

      MacDonald, said Hyrst suddenly. I didn’t kill him. I was innocent. I can’t forget that.

      Careful, said the whisper. Watch out.

      I didn’t kill MacDonald. Somebody did. Somebody let me pay for it. Who? Was it Landers? Was it Saul? We four were together out there on Titan, when he died.

      Careful, Hyrst. They’re coming. Listen to me. You think this is your own mind speaking, question-and-answer. But it isn’t.

      Hyrst sprang upright on the narrow bed, his heart pounding, the sweat running cold on his skin. Who are you? Where are you? How—

      They’re here, said the whisper calmly. Be quiet.

      Two men came into the ward. I am Dr. Merridew, said the one in the white coverall, smiling at Hyrst with a brisk professional smile. This is Warden Meister. We didn’t mean to startle you. There are a few questions, before we release you—

      Merridew, said the whisper in Hyrst’s mind, is a psychiatrist. Let me handle this.

      Hyrst sat still, his hands lax between his knees, his eyes wide and fixed in astonishment. He heard the psychiatrist’s questions, and he heard the answers he gave to them, but he was merely an instrument, with no conscious volition, it was the whisperer in his mind who was answering. Then the warden shuffled some papers he held in his hand and asked questions of his own.

      You underwent the Humane Penalty without admitting your guilt. For the record, now that the penalty has been paid, do you wish to change your final statements?

      The voice in Hyrst’s mind, the secret voice, said swiftly to him. Don’t argue with them, don’t get angry, or they’ll keep you on and on here.

      But— thought Hyrst.

      I know you’re innocent, but they’ll never believe it. They’ll keep you on for further psychiatric tests. They might get near the truth, Hyrst—the truth about us.

      Suddenly Hyrst began to understand, not all and not clearly, something of what had happened to him. The obscuring mists began to lift from the borders of his mind.

      What is the truth, he asked in that inner quiet, about us?

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1